On many occasions in the past months, accusations of anti-Semitism have been used as a justification for the German government and cultural institutions to threaten and silence anti-war perspectives – many of them coming from people of colour, migrants, foreigners, students, artists and queer and trans* people, like us.

We especially disagree with the crackdown on and silencing of Palestinian and Jewish voices under the disguise of fighting anti-Semitism. While we receive public funding for XPOSED, we are not a public institution. As an independent queer film festival, we are going to uphold freedom of artistic expressions and a space for dissent and political voices.

While we do not need to agree on everything in order to come together, we refuse to censor ourselves from our responsibility as a festival, towards our audience or invited filmmakers, even if the conversations we need to have are difficult and painful. We reject militarism, anti-Muslim racism and anti-Semitism in all their forms.